Rue Snider

Speak My Mind

Rue Snider is a Brooklyn-based songwriter who has released three LPs and four EPs since 2012.

I was in an apartment in Greenpoint, Brooklyn watching the election returns when my hometown in Pennsylvania, the place I spent the first 20 years of my life, appeared on MSNBC. They said Butler County was going "redder" than it ever had and it might be the tipping point for the state. I crumbled. This area that I know so well, whose motto, "A church-going community," is prominently displayed on a sign as you enter downtown, chose the candidate of bigotry and intolerance. I starting crying. Then I got very angry. The next morning I woke up and wrote "Speak My Mind," and immediately began playing it at shows. What I've found most satisfying is that everywhere I go in the country, Maine to Arizona to Florida and back, people have embraced it as a rallying cry. Folks from all over have thanked me for voicing what I felt in those moments. Resist. —Rue Snider

Lyrics

This isn’t where I thought we would be
Half a decade deep celebrating white supremacy
Fear is an easy sell, like reality TV
Evangelicals chose the candidate of bigotry, the hypocrisy
Privilege is ignition
It burns in the alt-right
These are people who think women should be in kitchens
These are people still against miscegenation who think white men are maligned
And they speak their minds
So I’ll speak mine
When you politicize reproductive rights
You threaten the lives of people that I love
When your immigration line is that it’s deportation time
You threaten to destroy families that I love
Dr. King dreamed about equality this morning I woke up and felt like that dream died
The successor to my county’s first black president
Is a KKK supported climate change denying misogynist who lies
72 percent of the time
It still makes me cry
What do you say to the kids that wake up today
Who aren’t Christian, white, able-bodied, and straight?
It’s hard to teach them to love even in dissent
When ridicule is embraced by the president
So now we’re standing in the present naval gazing at the past
Depending on where you’re standing
It might not look that bad, if that’s the case you’ve been had
We can never go back
This isn’t where I thought we would be
Half a decade deep celebrating white supremacy